If I only eat breakfast and lunch will I lose weight?

[cpphelp]

I was thinking a typical day of:

8am: avocado on two whole meal toast with some chopped tomatoes or a poached egg on top.

2/3 pm: a homemade soup, or salad with plenty of fish/cheese/goats cheese - I have plenty of low fat and carb recipe's.

Snacks if needed - bananas, hard boiled eggs, 100g cashew nuts

Evening meal - not if I can help it, and never after 6pm.

Snacks - bananas, watermelon, blueberries, hard boiled eggs if really necessary - will try drinking water first.

Drinks all day Water and lemon and ginger tea. The chamomile in the evenings.

I've just stopping drinking heavily and I'm feeling okay, so hoping loose a lot of calories because of that anyway. Also doing some light walking daily, only about half as hour, as I'd like to focus on a menu plan first.

Are JUST breakfast and late lunch appropriate?

Well I just have lunch and dinner, so I don't see why not in theory. But how sustainable is that diet?

Wouldn't work for me as I can't sleep if I am hungry. I prefer to skip breakfast if I skip any meal.

I imagine you will but your life will be devoid of joy.

Looking forward to dinner gets me through the day.

Would you really be able to eat like this long term?

100g cashew nuts contains 581 calories, so that's a meal in itself.

You can rack up a whole load of calories with 'plenty of cheese'.

Ultimately, 2 meals of 900 calories will do the same as 3 meals of 600 calories.

Cashews and avocados are high calories. So no. Just track your calories and don't go over 1500 a day.

There are more than 500 calories in 100 gr of cashew nuts, so the answer is no.
It all comes down to how many calories you ear in a day. You can reduce the number of calories in many ways, by reducing the frequency of your eating, how often, reducing a macronutrient, like low fat or low carb, or whatever you invent, but if your calories are not lower, you will not lose.
A soup or salad with "plenty of cheese" is not a good way to reduce calories.

I gain weight on 3 meals, maintain on 2 so if want to lose I have dinner plus a snack or bowl of thin soup.

My main query is why are you bothering with any low carb recipes is you are eating toast for breakfast?

By all means reduce your carbs but best to do so consistently across meals or you may find yourself feeling very up and down energywise or even dipping in and out of keto flu.

Agree re skipping breakfast personally but the best diet is one you can stick to. Aim to lengthen the period of not eating as much as you can by eating breakfast as late as possible.

Your snacks and mains are quite high calorie food dense- especially avocado, cheese, nuts etc. You could easily have 3 meals and emergency snacks with the calories used on your 2 meals, which would probably be more sustainable.

Count your calories- that's what matters. Low fat/carb doesn't matter if it's still high calorie.

It's how many calories. Not when you have them. You have quite a high calorie diet so would be totally fine to have no dinner.

Whether you would lose weight on that amount depends on the person.

Put your details on a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calculator. Minus either 300-500 (I recommend starting light). This gives you a starting point. Then input your details into a calorie logging app like Nutracheck. It lets you input your sex, age, weight etc to help estimate the best amount of calories for your goals. Input daily what you eat, maybe put in what you plan to eat as listed here to start with and you'll have a good idea of whether the calories are too many or not.

Don't eat back exercise calories, or no more than 100 as you can never completely accurately tell how many you've burned. Stay consistent- you'll be on a roll.

500 cals of nuts will not fill you up enough not to be hungry. The key to a calorie deficit and being consistent is eating low calorie foods at high volume, not eating high calorie foods at low volume.

I eat a protein on a whole packet of 160g of cut green beans every day for one or 2 of my meals it’s actually hard to finish it because it’s high volume. If I eat scrambled eggs I have to eat about 4 to actually fill me up for a decent length of time. I would have to eat a whole big tin of soup at lunch to keep me going till dinner

I didn't realise I was getting this so wrong 😥.

I'll download some calorie counting apps today. I was only eating breakfast because everyone says it's so important to do so!

How about if I JUST eat when I'm hungry and within my calorie count?

Sorry everyone and I really appreciate all your responses

Don't eat when hungry. Your body is a natural over eater. It's spent millennia learning how to ensure you have reserves and will not starve.

Just eat in a deficit. Ideally 500 calories of deficit per day. Stay away from calorific food and carbs - essentially the same thing.

It's as hard as you make it. I love food and specifically carbs so it's really hard for me 😂

I gave up breakfast and made a few other small changes to achieve a 500 calorie a day deficit and I'm losing a steady 1lb a week which I'm very happy about. Lost 8lb so far and only 4lb to go to get to my target.

I mean yes eat when hungry to some extent but here is some helpful info about mindful eating and eating cues
https://www.mindful.org/6-ways-practice-mindful-eating/

This is funny. I live at 3.

Well, 3 or 9.

I personally find easier to not eat breakfast and push first meal to about 1pm then dinner at 6pm. I manage to maintain my weight that way.

Look into intermittent fasting. I've been loosely doing 16:8 and have lost a stone. I pretty much go as long as i can on a morning without calories and then take my 8 hour eating window from there. I haven't manages to stick to it religiously but enough to lose weight.

I absolutely couldn't skip dinner instead of breakfast, going to bed hungry every night would be awful.

@Peacheroo if you live at 3 maybe you need more food volume in meals. But not enough to make you go to 9!
I have a binge eating disorder and this scale helped me to reframe my hunger. I am always number 5. Literally all day all night, there is something wrong with my hunger hormones I am convinced. I have learnt how to ignore 5 and identify when it’s 4-3 and eat then and completely stop eating past 7 most of the time now

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day- invented by a breakfast cereal company.

Eating two or even one meal a day is good for you and can help lose weight. However eating breakfast and dinner removes the fasting benefit and also makes it much likelier that you'll get uncomfortably hungry in between. Your meals and snacks are also as people have said very high calorie so wouldn't support weight loss.
If you stick to lunch and dinner, one small snack if you really need (after lunch not before) and focus more on high volume, high green veg, lower carb meals you will probably lose some weight.

https://jamessmithcalculator.com/james-smith-academy-tdee-calculator/

Theres nothing wrong with avocados and nuts… they’re really nutritious. It’s better to eat those than a processed product ( eg cereal bar). They are quite calorie dense though so you don’t want to go mad on them ( and 100g of nuts is quite a lot). Yeah you can skip dinner if you want but I’d rather skip breakfast. ( sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t). Some people are really hungry when they wake up but I need to be awake a while before I can eat so missing that meal doesn’t have any major repercussions. I exercise in an empty stomach too with no problems …. We’re all different and that’s ok.

Fill out the TDEE calculator above and work out a decent daily calorie target. If you have a lot of weight to lose it will be pretty high eg 1800 calories and that’s fine. It will probably suggest a high protein target too. You can’t move without being told to eat more protein. If I skip breakfast I’ll tend to have a pretty large lunch of eggs, smoked fish or avocados with veggies like cherry tomatoes and red pepper and a piece of German rye bread. Or I might have a sweet potato wrap with hummus, a tin of tuna and hard boiled egg and salad. I’ve just started to add extra egg whites to omlettes ( you can buy cartons of egg whites) or cottage cheese to scrambled eggs. Snacks are fruits ( all kinds) nuts ( probably 30grams). For dinner I eat a reduced quantity of carbs… last night we had a chilli made with turkey mince and extra veg in with brown rice. I didn’t weigh it but I would say the rice was probably 75g cooked weight. I followed it up with a Kvarg protein yoghurt with some cherries. I always have a piece of chocolate to top things off.

There’s a lot of diets out there and I’ve done a lot of them but although I’ve lost weight I’ve never been able to keep it off. This year I’ve lost nearly 2 stone in a slow and steady way ( gained half a stone on holiday and had to re lose it again 🙄) I still eat a weekly takeaway but am moderate about quantities. I don’t drink much alcohol and I exercise. It’s not a race… I could be stricter and eat a few hundred calories less but I wouldn’t be able to sustain it. It’s about finding ways to eat foods that you enjoy that are nutritious, fill you up and make you feel good.

How much do you want to lose, and what are the habits (emotional or eating) that have led to you being over the weight you want to be? Your initial ideas sounded a bit drastic and unsustainable, and it sounds as if you’re not completely clued up on calories vs nutrition. Long term weight management is all about habits that are sustainable and healthy rather than drastic and punitive. What’s the background?